The far-left Washington Post reports that Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) lied about his associations with Louis Farrakhan, the openly anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam.

Ellison, who is also the vice chairman of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), has repeatedly denied having any association with Farrakhan after 2006, the year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives.

In December of 2016, while appearing on Morning Joe, he said that he denounced Farrakhan in 2006 and that was that. “We’re talking about something that happened in 1995. This was the year that the Million Man March took off. People were attacking the march at the time,” Ellison said. “Man, I’m telling you back in 2006 and before, I disavowed them.”

That same month, his spokesperson said that since the Million Man March in 1995, he has “had no additional involvement with March organizer Louis Farrakhan or his organizations, has long since denounced him, and rejects all forms of anti-Semitism.”

This is simply not true, and even the Washington Post’s fact checker — anti-Trump activist Glenn Kessler — could not find a way to save Ellison from receiving the full boat of four Pinocchios.

The facts are this: On at least three occasions since 2006, including as recently as a private meeting with Farrakhan in 2016, Ellison has “crossed paths” with Farrakhan — once at an event at an Islamic Center in Virginia, once at a dinner for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, and that private meeting in 2016.

Also attending the private meeting was Rep. André Carson (D-IN). Carson and Ellison are both practicing Muslims.

It is rare for Kessler and the Washington Post to go after a Democrat in this way, much less a sacred cow like Ellison who checks off four important boxes that usually results in the media protecting him at all costs. Ellison is a 1) a Democrat; 2) black; 3) a Muslim; 4) vice chair of the DNC.

What the disgraced Washington Post fact-checkers usually do to protect Democrats in these circumstances is either flat-out lie, as they did to protect Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from the fact they are both in favor of gun confiscation or wait for a Republican to “overreach” in their criticism of the Democrat; that way, the fact check smears the Republican as the liar while avoiding what would be a damaging fact check of the Democrat’s lies.